Ignoring hatred's knock

Wednesday

Aug 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 28, 2013 at 4:45 AM

Decades before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told the world about his dream 50 years ago Wednesday, Mary Nelson lived the nightmare.

As the youngest of 11 children born to an African-American sharecropper and reared in the segregated South in the 1940s, the flames of racism singed her young soul. She was struck with jagged epithets and sharp stones while walking muddy back roads to school. The former was more painful than the latter, force-feeding her the first bitter taste of reality that society viewed her as a second-class citizen.

Nelson was directed by law to sit in the back of buses and couldn’t understand why separate doors existed for blacks and whites in restaurants and public bathrooms. She dealt with the horror of learning the Ku Klux Klan burned her cousin’s house in their hometown of Augusta, Ga., killing him, his wife and their six young children.

All before she turned 10.

“When I sit back and think about what I went through as a child, it scares me to death,” said Nelson, a Hatboro resident who turns 74 on Friday. “I wonder how I survived the hatred. I wonder how going through all that didn’t harden my heart. I just remember thinking, ‘I didn’t do anything to white people that should cause them to hate me.’ I was a little girl, confused about what was happening to me.

“As I think back, I needed a counselor to help me sort through it. But back then, for someone like me, there wasn’t anyone.”

Hatred banged on Mary Nelson’s heart; she refused to answer. She understood that to help douse the flames of racism, she couldn’t be tempted to fuel the inferno.

“Why contribute to something I knew was wrong?” she said.

Nelson’s family escaped their nightmare by moving to Philadelphia when she was 12. She graduated from nursing school, married and raised eight children. And when she was 23, she heard the inspirational voice she was certain would lead her people out of the darkness.

“I remember hearing Dr. King’s speech and thinking how this was someone who could change things for all people,” Nelson said. “He fought for change without violence. For the first time in my life, I remember thinking that maybe this was the man who could help people see that our country has been going down the wrong road for too long.”

Nelson admits progress between the races has come slowly, but is optimistic about the future. This woman who was physically and emotionally abused by Southern whites now embraces grandchildren born to her son and his Caucasian wife.

“How could something wonderful like this happen if I decided to harbor hatred in my heart?” she said. “I never told my children what happened to me when they were growing up because I didn’t want them to hate. I didn’t tell them about what happened to me until just a few years ago. Why make them pay and suffer for the prejudice I faced? What good would that do?

“People have to understand you can’t wait for the government to change it; people have to find it in their heart to change it. That’s the only way.”

In his historic speech a half-century ago Wednesday, King advised, “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.”

Nelson continues to embrace that guidance, ignoring hatred’s knock, dousing racism’s flames. She recalls seeing a homeless white man sitting on the sidewalk near a Philadelphia thrift shop, where she had bought clothes for her children. When she handed the hungry man a bucket of chicken she had bought for him, he wept.

“He told me that most people just ignore him or throw a quarter at him,” Nelson said. “And then he told me he loved me.”

The road to racial harmony is long and jammed with ignorance. But, Nelson says, at least we’re on the right road.

“Dr. King didn’t get to realize his dream; he knew he wouldn’t live to see it,” Nelson said. “But what he started was (that) people of all races, not just blacks, marching for change, and that’s the way it should be — all races.

“I feel that my people have helped America grow. So, when somebody helps make a cake, everybody should get a slice.”

Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@calkins.com or @philgianficaro on Twitter.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Advertise

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Intelligencer ~ One Oxford Valley, 2300 East Lincoln Highway, Suite 500D, Langhorne, PA, 19047 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service